FOR RELEASE: December 4, 1995

PHOTO NO.: STScI-PRC95-47a


DUST DISK AROUND A BLACK HOLE IN GALAXY NGC 4261

This is a Hubble Space Telescope image of an 800-light-year-wide
spiral-shaped disk of dust fueling a massive black hole in the center
of galaxy, NGC 4261, located 100 million light-years away in the
direction of the constellation Virgo.

By measuring the speed of gas swirling around the black hole,
astronomers calculate that the object at the center of the disk is 1.2
billion times the mass of our Sun, yet concentrated into a region of
space not much larger than our solar system.

The strikingly geometric disk -- which contains enough mass to make
100,000 stars like our Sun -- was first identified in Hubble
observations made in 1992.  These new Hubble images reveal for the
first time structure in the disk, which may be produced by waves or
instabilities in the disk.

Hubble also reveals that the disk and black hole are offset from the
center of NGC 4261, implying some sort of dynamical interaction is
taking place, that has yet to be fully explained.

Credit: L. Ferrarese (Johns Hopkins University) and NASA

Image files in GIF and JPEG format, captions, and press release text 
may be accessed on Internet via anonymous ftp from oposite.stsci.edu in 
/pubinfo:
                              GIF                 JPEG
PRC95-47  NGC 4261 Core  gif/NGC4261C.gif   jpeg/NGC4261C.jpg

Higher resolution digital versions (300 dpi JPEG) of the release
photograph will be available temporarily in /pubinfo/hrtemp:
95-47.jpg.

GIF and JPEG images, captions and press release text are available via
World Wide Web at URL http://www.stsci.edu/pubinfo/PR/95/47.html, or
via links in http://www.stsci.edu/pubinfo/Latest.html, and in
http://www.stsci.edu/pubinfo/Pictures.html.